The heart has its reasons

The heart is a muscle that needs lifelong care and maintenance. Over the past few weeks, thanks to long weekends and extra time with family and friends, my heart and soul teamed up for a different kind of work out. Is it part of getting older? The time of year? I found myself flowing between a sweet memory that brought back true joy and an abundance of heart-clenching ruminations that a good life can so quickly be changed.

What was the memory? The ruminations? What does it all mean? To the point of this column, does it do one’s health any good to brood about matters of heart and soul?

The memory was brought on suddenly by a dish of chocolate ice cream. It is usually not my choice. I like vanilla with caramel, but this was excellent chocolate ice cream, and it made me swoon. I had a flashback to a time when I was about four or five years old and someone gave me my first chocolate ice cream cone at a beachside stand. I swooned then too. “What kind of heaven is this, right here in my hand, on a wafer cone?”

For the past few days, I have been asking others, expectantly, hoping for kindred souls, “Do you remember the first time you tasted chocolate ice cream?” Few share the memory, but it is wonderful when eyes light up and the stories come out.

At the same time, the ruminations have been plentiful. The world is a mess. It has been a mess for a long time. There is little hope the scene will be cleaned up. It is depressing.

Life can be good, but in the face of disasters, or when living them firsthand, life can be awful. It can jolt from good to bad in an instant, or it can drift slowly that way. How taxing on the soul when one perceives nefarious forces even in the case of a bad life getting better. Pure virtue is so uncommon.

Is there any good to come of philosophizing? I am asking this in the sense of one’s own health and wellbeing. Or are we better off sticking to the easy joy of a happy memory?

Psychologists have been studying this question, and the evidence offers an encouraging distinction. A review in Current Opinion in Psychology found that nostalgia (reflecting on personally meaningful memories, often involving people we care about) can promote psychological wellbeing. By contrast, research on rumination, the repetitive revisiting of negative thoughts, links it to a range of mental health difficulties. The difference is not between thinking about happy things and thinking about unhappy ones. It is between reflection that helps us understand our lives and thinking that leaves us trapped in the same distress.

The practical advice? Enjoy the memories when they come. Tell the story, ask someone about theirs, and savour the details. When darker thoughts demand attention, give them a fair hearing, particularly if there is something to learn or something to be done.

Recognize when thinking has stopped being useful. We cannot make the world virtuous by worrying about its shortcomings, any more than we can make life predictable by anticipating its cruelties. The wisest thing we can do for our health is to put down the burden of trying to make sense of everything and enjoy the chocolate ice cream.

Of course, the heart muscle needs looking after, but if a spoonful of chocolate ice cream also makes the heart and soul sing, I see no reason not to enjoy it that way.

This column offers opinions on health and wellness, not personal medical advice.